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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

This is our take on a Nerf Maverick REV-6, which is probably the most commonly Steampunk'd gun of all and a first project for many a budding gadgeteer. We couldn't resist this one that we found at a thrift store for $1. To our delight, it still functioned. And, of course, we chose to keep it that way.

I'd planned to delay posting this Nerf gun mod until I had some pics of the leather holster that was made for it. But SO hasn't got around to repairing a strap that fell off the holster at the Scarby Faire Steampunk Invasion, yet.

Ours is pretty simple. No frills on it. Mostly just paint and a few of the typical nerdy mods. (If you want to mod your own Nerf gun, youtube.com and the many Nerf forums are loaded with ideas.) The first step is always to sand, clean and prime the outer parts. I used flat black and rust spray paint primer painted/stained with waterbased acrylic paints, and sealed with clear acrylic spray paint.

We opted to do the barrel mod so that it would be easier (and funner) to load the darts. And, I also altered the "air restrictors", which is supposed to improve the power. We noticed a somewhat increased range. I also sanded off all the logos and such. Some of them had been damaged by rough play of the previous owner.

The only big alteration was the cutting out of shapes on the barrel and trigger. This was an attempt to lighten up the bulky look of this model. The cutouts on the outer casing of the barrel were done with the Dremel tool with drill and grinding bits. It's turned out pretty cool and didn't effect the working of the gun. You can see light and the pin though the center of the gun barrel. Wish we'd taken off a little more.

Upon reflection. I wish I'd painted some of the interior parts. I failed to coat the bright orange pieces in the center of the barrel and the pump. So they stick out like a soar thumb when you flip the barrel out. Ah well, I'll do that another day. Don't really feel like taking the whole thing apart again any time soon. :) SO may do some more alterations to this gun at a later date, as well. I'll post the holster as soon as he repairs it. We didn't manage to get any pics of it at faire.

I've future plans of my own to work on a couple small Nerf guns and a cap gun. Wish me luck, and time!

Friday, May 13, 2011

The daughter and I made another pair of hair falls using our dyed pistachio shells. This pair is for her, but they ended up longer than mine. oops! :)

Here's a close up of some of our dyed shells in red, yellow and blue to look like flower petals and green for leaves. If I'd have planned better, I would have turned the last row of each group over. I think it would have made a better transition.

We knotted a simpler variation of what I did on mine (sans beads) at the top section. The lighting was playing tricks on me. The white yarn matched the shells until I got out into natural lighting.

After daughter was complaining about the difficulty she was having stringing the shells, I devised a makeshift needle threader that is just a piece of fishing line taped together at the ends. Instead of poking the yarn though the shells hole, we are now poking the threader into the hole after running the yarn through the loop. We're now able to string more than one shell on the yarn at a time and just slide the extras down to the end of the yarn to hang while we braid and tie the knots. Wish I'd have thought of this on the first pair. :)

These are so fun to make together while sitting around and such a great use for all the shells and scrap yarn I've accumulated, though I'm running out of dyed shells. I have mostly purple left. I experimented on some of the shells by dipping only a portion of the shells into purple dye. The red color bled up the shell making an interesting effect. I plan to use these for yet another pair of hair falls in the future. I'm sure you will see a few more pairs of these among other things before we are finished

Friday, May 6, 2011

If you'll recall last post when I mentioned making something with my dyed pistachio shells, I finally have some pics of what we did with some of them.

I made a pair of hair falls for my tribal bellydance outfits. Granted this pair doesn't really contain many colorful ones, I do plan to make some with more of them. I just wanted to experiment first. Daughter is still planning a bracelet, but we haven't got to it, yet.

The general construction for these falls was inspired by a great tutorial by bellygoddess. The same tute is also available here. The main body of the fall with all the shells is "macrame'd" in square knots while the top and inbetween portions are braided in a 4-strand round plait. I used some beads and scraps of yarn I've kept.

In a close-ups you can better see the orange-ish dyed shells I sewed on as an after thought. I wrapped the transitions with a rose colored embroidery floss.

The tassels are just extra yarn bits. Yes, I keep all the tiny bits of yarn even. They come in handy for this stuff. :) And, those tassel caps are from an old jacket's pull strings. :)

I also managed to finish a pop tab fall I'd started probably last year. It's kind of a sampler to see how I should weave the tabs in. You can see more about this one and future tabistry hair falls on my other blog devoted solely to tabs at tabistry.blogspot.com.